If you’re in the market for a new, ultralight Mac laptop, now is the time to buy it. Amazon is now selling the newest 13-inch MacBook Air with an M4 chip and 16GB of unified memory for $849.99, a $149.01 discount on the Midnight color and other finishes currently going for around $899. The absolute floor for this config has reached as low as $799 in flash sales, but those are more infrequent events, and today’s price gets you pretty close to the best we’ve ever seen for a spec that most people will actually want.
Why this MacBook Air deal stands out for most buyers
At that price, you’re paying midrange money for a premium machine. The 16GB of RAM is the difference-maker: Apple’s memory architecture feeds the CPU and GPU from a single high-speed pool, so going from 8GB to 16GB makes a big difference when you’re in pro apps, running browser-heavy multitasking work, or working with photo or video. That upgrade usually costs significantly more at checkout, so that’s why this sale punches above its weight.
The hardware is still top of the class. The metal chassis is approximately 0.44 inches thin and feels reassuringly solid in the hand. At a little under three pounds, it disappears inside a backpack or appears boardroom-worthy on a desk. It’s a design that has become iconic for good reason: its mix of portability and durability, with a keyboard and trackpad lauded by reviewers at Laptop Mag and Wirecutter on every iteration.
Everyday performance, battery life, and display quality
The M4 chip isn’t just about being faster; it’s also about sustained performance per watt. Apple’s most recent silicon generations have topped efficiency charts in independent testing by publications like AnandTech and Notebookcheck, and the Air line finds the company drawing on that bank to deliver long battery life without fans. Apple rates the laptop for up to 18 hours on a charge, and real-world mixed use tends to fall quite comfortably into most people’s all-day work schedule.
For both makers and students, the 13-inch panel offers a wonderfully crisp and rich dose of color at a 2,560 x 1,664 resolution that fills out the DCI-P3 gamut for accurate tones. That counts when you’re grading photos, trimming 4K footage, or simply watching high-quality video. The M4 is faster than you’d think for any system given its size and processor, and — because popular apps like Final Cut Pro and Adobe Lightroom Classic are optimized for Apple silicon — it manages multi-track timelines and large RAW libraries more gracefully than older Intel-era laptops in the same class.
Connectivity and creature comforts remain spartan yet thoughtful. You have a bright, evenly backlit keyboard, a generously large glass trackpad that affords precision gesture control, and a better-than-ever webcam and speakers. Wireless is bumped to Wi‑Fi 6E, an upgrade that can make a real difference on congested networks if your router supports it.
Should you buy the M4 MacBook Air or save with the M2?
There’s another intriguing angle here: the previous-generation 13-inch MacBook Air with an M2 chip has recently dropped to about $699 at major retailers. If your laptop workdays are mostly about email, research, office documents, coding, and the occasional light photo edit — with lots of browser tabs open at once — the M2 is still an excellent value. Many newsroom producers and content editors are using M2 units for daily use with no problems.
Where the M4 is going to pull its weight is heavy creative work, professional multitasking, and future-proofing. It flows nicely, while Wi‑Fi 6E is added to the mix along with better audio and a superior webcam than we saw on the M2 generation. If you hope to use the laptop for many years, or if you regularly use pro apps, it’s worthwhile to spend extra on an M4 — particularly at this sale price. If you prioritize price and have lighter demands, the M2 is still a good purchase.
Price history, color caveats, and practical buying tips
Deal-tracking and retail analytics companies such as Adobe’s Digital Price Index say laptop discounts top out during most holidays, but really good Apple bargains that cut the price of current configs on MacBook Pro can be had at essentially any time of the year. Unfortunately, the Midnight finish is also often where the biggest discounts tend to appear — for instance, today’s $149.01 markdown appears limited to Midnight — although it should be mentioned that darker anodized finishes may show fingerprints more than Silver or Starlight.
One practical note: 256GB of storage is enough for most people, but the real estate occupied by a large photo library will fill it up quickly.
Creatives with burgeoning archives should budget for an external SSD or start using cloud storage. Considering how good the battery life and lightweight Air are, carrying an extra portable in my bag is a pretty small price to pay for that low a cost.
Bottom line: this is the MacBook Air deal that’s perfectly positioned in terms of price, performance, and longevity. If you’ve been wanting a modern, quiet, all-day laptop that can stretch from Stata to 4K edits like we have, then the M4 Air at $849.99 is easy to recommend. And if you’re looking to spend less, the discounted M2 is an even less weighty hit on your wallet without giving up the Air’s signature experience.
